ABSTRACT
Language is a game you can play without knowing any of the rules. Listen to the conversation of a five-year-old. Listen not just to
what they are saying, but to the shift between proper nouns and abstract nouns, the changes of tense, the sheer dazzling grammatical complexity. That child’s brain can communicate the past and future, causation, probability, moral imperatives, social hierarchy and internal mental states, using just a few words in a certain order. Listen to them grappling with pronouns. Listen to the stresses they lay on particular words to imply and exaggerate. And just sit back for the linguistic fireworks display if you disagree with them, cannot meet their demands, or if they feel they have been short-changed in some way.
